It’s the new year and you realized you had accumulated so much clutter!
Do not fret, a new year means a new start. And what a great way to start over than cleaning up the things from the past – throw the unimportant things and stick with the important ones.
Set a date
Decluttering a house is a task you should not do alone. The house got cluttered because there are things you can’t let go and things you just do not know what to do yet. So, if you do it by yourself, you might just end up feeling sentimental all over again and not throwing away anything.
Set a date and invite a friend or two who are great in organizing things and following through the plan. Include your family in this endeavor as well.
Set the mood
It helps the cleaning up party to do its job if everyone’s feeling it. Make a big deal out of the day and make all people involved (including teenage children if you invited them) to feel excited about the day.
Throw, Donate and Keep

Provide sacks or baskets labeled “for trash” “for donation” and “for keeping.”
As a general guide, things you did not use or needed for one to two years are most probably things that you do not really need. So, look into your closets, drawers and other storage areas, there might be things that are just taking space in your house that you do not really need anymore.
Consider the following as things to put in trash:

Empty bottles and boxes

Expired food products

Broken appliances and furniture

These are things to put up for donation:

Baby clothes (if your children are all grown up)

Clothes you have not worn for a year or two because they are too small or too big

Your college clothes

Old appliances and furniture that you do not use because you have a new one

Old, working models of gadgets that you do not use anymore

Old text books and books

Other things that the less privilege would be happy to get

After stashing things in your “for keeping” sack, double check to see if you really need all of the things you want to keep. Ask another person to go through it with you.
Study your house’s rooms
Look at the rooms in your house and try figure out which rooms has the most clutter.
After figuring out which areas are prone to clutter, try to find a solution. Do you need additional storage area in that room or maybe you have too much already?
Is your house functioning as it is suppose to or does it only serve as a storage area?
Reorganize and assign storage

After studying your house, reorganize if necessary.
Assign closet, drawers and storages to particular things like shoes, school bags, paper work and even small things like pens, receipt and keys.
Make everyone have the habit of putting away
Now that everything is clear, let everybody adapt the habit of putting things away after using anything – big or small.
Keep on trying
Habits cannot change or form over night so be patient with yourself and with everyone else at home.
Also, enlist a friend or a family’s help in reminding you to stop buying things that you do not actually have a need. These things, no matter how little, will only accumulate and add to the clutter.
As we open the new year, let us purge ourselves of material things we do not need in our life and start fresh!
Special thanks to Andrew Bowden for the main image.